Natural farming (自然農法, shizen nōhō), also referred to as "the Fukuoka Method", "the natural way of farming", or "do-nothing farming", is an ecological farming approach established by Masanobu Fukuoka (1913–2008). Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer and philosopher, introduced the term in his 1975 book The One-Straw Revolution. The title refers not to lack of effort, but to the avoidance of manufactured inputs and equipment. Natural farming is related to fertility farming, organic farming, sustainable agriculture, agroecology, agroforestry, ecoagriculture and permaculture, but should be distinguished from biodynamic agriculture. The system works along with the natural biodiversity, the interactions and relationships each farmed area, encouraging the complexity of living organisms—both plant and animal—that shape each particular ecosystem to thrive along with food plants. Fukuoka saw farming both as a means of producing food and as an aesthetic or spiritual approach to life, the ultimate goal of which was, "the cultivation and perfection of human beings". While Fukuoka's world view was influenced from Zen Buddhism and Taoist spiritual beliefs, he was not interested in dogmatic religion and instead saw nature as the teacher and natural farming as the ultimate spiritual practice. For Fukuoka, spiritual health was evaluated through one's relationship to the land. He suggested that farmers could benefit from closely observing local conditions. Natural farming is a closed system, one that demands no human-supplied inputs and mimics natural conditions. Fukuoka developed natural farming after observation that farmers were losing their sensitivity to the land after Americans introduced chemical agriculture to Japan post World War II. He saw that with the introduction of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, the typical time and labor for farmers was cut in half and traditional farming methods such as crop rotation and crop covers were neglected which depleted soil minerals and structure. This in turn impacted crop health. Fukuoka accredited chemical agriculture as technology that was interested solely in economic and industrial development. Fukuoka's natural farming practice rejected the use of modern technology, and after twenty-five years, his farm demonstrated consistently comparable yields to that of the most technologically advanced farms in Japan, doing so without the pollution, soil loss, energy consumption, and environmental degradation inherent in these modern types of farming. One of the main prompts of natural farming, is to ask why we should apply modern technology to the process of growing food, if nature is capable of achieving similar yields without the negative side-effects of these technologies. Such ideas radically challenged conventions that are core to modern agro-industries; instead of promoting importation of nutrients and chemicals, he suggested an approach that takes advantage of the local environment. Although natural farming is sometimes considered a subset of organic farming, it differs greatly from conventional organic farming, which Fukuoka considered to be another modern technique that disturbs nature. Fukuoka claimed that his approach prevents water pollution, biodiversity loss and soil erosion, while providing ample amounts of food, all while outcompeting the yield of other farmlands in Japan that utilize fertilizer and pesticides. There is a growing body of scientific work in fields like agroecology and regenerative agriculture, that lend support to these claims.
Masanobu Fukuoka's principles In principle, practitioners of natural farming maintain that it is not a technique but a view, or a way of seeing ourselves as a part of nature, rather than separate from or above it. Accordingly, the methods themselves vary widely depending on culture and local conditions. Rather than offering a structured method, Fukuoka distilled the natural farming mindset into five principles:
No tillage No fertilizer No pesticides or herbicides No weeding No pruning
Though many of his plant varieties and practices relate specifically to Japan and even to local conditions in subtropical western Shikoku, his philosophy and the governing principles of his farming systems have been applied widely around the world, from Africa to the temperate northern hemisphere. Principally, natural farming minimises human labour and adopts, as closely as practical, nature's production of foods such as rice, barley, daikon or citrus in biodiverse agricultural ecosystems. Without plowing, seeds germinate well on the surface if site conditions meet the needs of the seeds placed there. Fukuoka used the presence of spiders in his fields as a key performance indicator of sustainability. Fukuoka specifies that the ground remain covered by weeds, white clover, alfalfa, herbaceous legumes, and sometimes deliberately sown herbaceous plants. Ground cover is present along with grain, vegetable crops and orchards. Chickens run free in orchards and ducks and carp populate rice fields. Periodically ground layer plants including weeds may be cut and left on the surface, returning their nutrients to the soil, while suppressing weed growth. This also facilitates the sowing of seeds in the same area because the dense ground layer hides the seeds from animals such as birds. For summer rice and winter barley grain crops, ground cover enhances nitrogen fixation. Straw from the previous crop mulches the topsoil. Each grain crop is sown before the previous one is harvested by broadcasting the seed among the standing crop. Later, this method was reduced to a single direct seeding of clover, barley and rice over the standing heads of rice. The result is a denser crop of smaller, but highly productive and stronger plants. Fukuoka's practice and philosophy emphasised small scale operation and challenged the need for mechanised farming techniques for high productivity, efficiency and economies of scale. While his family's farm was larger than the Japanese average, he used one field of grain crops as a small-scale example of his system.
Yoshikazu Kawaguchi
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